Aachen (, also known as Bad Aachen ) is a spa town in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany.

Geographically, Aachen is the westernmost city of Germany, located along its borders with Belgium and the Netherlands, west of Cologne.

RWTH Aachen University, one of Germany's Universities of Excellence, is located in the city.

There is some documentary proof that the Romans named the hot sulfur springs of Aachen Aquis-Granum, and indeed to this day the city is known in Italian as Aquisgrana, in Spanish as Aquisgrán and in Polish as Akwizgran.

He went on to remain there in a mansion which he may have extended, although there is no source attesting to any significant building activity at Aachen in his time, apart from the building of the Palatine Chapel in Aachen ( since 1929, cathedral ) and the palatial presentation halls.

Traces of this hidden agenda of the city's history is found in the 18th century guidebooks to Aachen as well as to the other spas ; the main indication for visiting patients, ironically, was syphilis ; only by the end of the 19th century had rheuma become the most important object of cures at Aachen and Burtscheid.

The Grashaus, a late medieval house at the Markt, is one of the oldest non-religious buildings in downtown Aachen.

The Elisenbrunnen is one of the most famous sights of Aachen.

Aachen has a large number of spin-offs from the university's IT-technology department and is a major centre of IT development in Germany.

The airport that serves Aachen, Maastricht Aachen Airport, is located about 40 km away in Dutch territory, close to the town of Beek.

Aachen is connected to the Autobahn A4 ( West-East ), A44 ( North-South ) and A544 ( a smaller motorway from the A4 to the Europaplatz near the city centre ).

Due to the enormous amount of traffic at the Aachen road interchange, there is often serious traffic accumulation, which is why there are plans to expand the interchange in the coming years.

Aachen is at the western end of the Benrath line that divides High German to the south from the rest of the West Germanic speech area to the north.

The local specialty of Aachen is an originally stonehard type of sweet bread, baked in large flat loaves, called Aachener Printen.

RWTH Aachen University, established as Polytechnicum in 1870, is one of the Germany's Universities of Excellence with strong emphasis on technological research, especially for electrical and mechanical engineering, computer sciences, physics, and chemistry.

The university clinics attached to the RWTH, the Klinikum Aachen, is the biggest single-building hospital in Europe.

The German Army's Technical School ( Technische Schule des Heeres und Fachschule des Heeres für Technik ) is in Aachen.

Aachen is twinned with:

ICE high speed trains from Brussels via Cologne to Frankfurt am Main and Thalys trains from Paris to Cologne also stop at Aachen Central Station.

It also maintains a botanical garden ( the Botanischer Garten Aachen ).

There are also a number of regional airports, the most popular being Eindhoven Airport, Maastricht Aachen Airport, Rotterdam The Hague Airport and Groningen Airport Eelde.

Led by Rudolph Hermann who arrived in April 1937 from the University of Aachen, the number of technical staff members reached two hundred in 1943, and it also included Hermann Kurzweg of the ( University of Leipzig ) and Walter Haeussermann.

He was also patron to some of the best contemporary artists, who mainly produced new works in the Northern Mannerist style, such as Bartholomeus Spranger, Hans von Aachen, Giambologna, Giuseppe Arcimboldo, Aegidius Sadeler, Roelant Savery, and Adrian de Vries, as well as commissioning works from Italians like Veronese.

He also received the two imperial cities, Aachen and Rome.

Elected King of the Romans 16 February 1486 in Frankfurt-am-Main at his father's initiative and crowned on 9 April 1486 in Aachen, Maximilian also stood at the head of the Holy Roman Empire upon his father's death in 1493.

And there are also related dialects around Aachen and in the extreme north of the province of Liège.

Limburgish is also spoken in a considerable part of the German Lower Rhine area, in what could be called German-administered Limburg: from the border regions of Kleve, Aachen, Viersen, Heinsberg stretching out to the Rhine river.

Neighboring districts are Viersen, district-free city Mönchengladbach, Neuss, Düren and Aachen, and also the Dutch province Limburg.

Sélestat was also more central to the Empire than Aachen.

The seat of the institution remained undecided over years ; while the prince initially favored Koblenz, the cities of Aachen, Bonn, Cologne and Düsseldorf also applied, with Aachen and Cologne being the main competitors.

While the ( then no more royal ) TH Aachen flourished in the 1920s with the introduction of the more independent faculties, several new institutes and the general students ' committee, first signs of nationalist radicalization were also visible within the university.

In the latest ranking published by DAAD together with Centre for Higher Education Development and Die Zeit, RWTH Aachen also stands on top among other German universities in the aforementioned fields of engineering and computer science.

Charles also created a large palace at Aachen, a series of roads, and a canal.

On 21 October, soldiers of the 26th Infantry Regiment, supported by the reinforced battalion of the 110th Infantry Regiment finally conquered central Aachen ; that day also marked the surrender of the last German garrison, in the Hotel Quellenhof, ending the battle for the city.

Ironically, it was the 3 – 0 home defeat to Bochum on 5 May that mathematically secured HSV's Bundesliga status as struggling Alemannia Aachen ( 16th ) and Mainz ( 17th ) also lost their games on the same weekend and despite the points difference only being six points with two games left, the goal difference was too large to make up by either club.

Charlemagne also is said to have acquired a piece of the sponge, which is venerated in the cathedral at his capital, Aachen.

There is also a survey by Charles Sims from Rutgers University and an older survey by Joachim Neubüser from RWTH Aachen.

On 17th May 2008, Alemannia Aachen began building a new stadium also named Tivoli nearby, which replaced the old stadium on 17th August 2009.

The airport is also northwest of the city of Aachen, Germany.

By the middle of the 19th century, industrialisation swept away most of the city's medieval rules of production and commerce, although the entirely corrupt remains of the city's mediæval constitution was kept in place ( compare the famous remarks of Georg Forster in his Ansichten vom Niederrhein ) until 1801, when Aachen became the " chef-lieu du département de la Roer " in Napoléon's First French Empire.

Imperial strongholds ( Kaiserpfalzen ) became economic and cultural centres, of which Aachen was the most famous.

One of the god ’ s most famous cult centres was at Aquae Granni ( now Aachen, Germany ).

Cappella Palatina ( illustrated ) and Palatine Chapel in Aachen are two most famous palatine chapels of Europe.